> If you want to pay me for availability that's fine, my rate is 1.5x. If you don't, that's fine too.
While I agree with your sentiment, I don't think 1.5x for 48 hours for being on call over a weekend is a sensible or reasonable ask.
Personally I'd be happy to manage/curtail the occasional weekend's social activity for 2 days pay (or time in lieu), at least as long as it's not as frequent as every month. While almost 2 weeks pay for being on call (and potentially never actually paged) would be nice, it's a kind of insane ask that just sends the wrong message in my opinion. If you don't want to do on call, just say so. Don't risk being mis interpreted as being a money-grubbing mercenary by pretending you'd be happy to do it for a high enough price that it would be totally impractical for most businesses to pay.
(If you came to me with the demand for 72 hours pay for being on call over a weekend, I'd advertise your position with a "regular 1 web in 6 on call" in the job description explaining you get 2 days pay for being on call for a weekend, then PIP you out for being a jerk as soon as I could. You're looking a lot like either a money-grubbing mercenary, or a spectacularly bad communicator.)
> While I agree with your sentiment, I don't think 1.5x for 48 hours for being on call over a weekend is a sensible or reasonable ask
I don't think me being asked to work weekends is a very reasonable ask either so here we are. Pay me or find someone else. Pretty basic.
> Personally I'd be happy to ...
Personally I won't. That's my point..
> Don't risk being mis interpreted as being a money-grubbing mercenary by pretending you'd be happy to do it for a high enough price
That is exactly the situation though? I'm not working for you for feels. If you pay me enough I will work weekends on top of my normal 40, but it will cost you.
You might not think it's sensible, yet millions of people live the reality of 1.5x+ overtime rates for on call duties in other industries, unionized workplaces and first world countries with better labor laws.
Yes, we should all be working for free for the sheer pleasure of changing the world, making VCs and company owners richer, and for the privilege of working under you.
Come on, expecting to be paid for work shouldn’t be a fireable offense or a signal for you to look for a new chump that will accept a worse deal.
My point is that asking for 72 hours compensation for being on call over a weekend is unreasonable, and I will consider you unreasonable for asking that.
Saying "No, I was never asked and never agreed to doing on call when I started, and I'm not going to agree to it now." is way way less unreasonable, in fact it's a perfectly reasonable response.
Negotiating "more than free but less that 72 hours" is also perfectly reasonable, I'm not looking for "chumps" to do it for free.
But if you tell me "2 weeks pay for a weekend of on call or GTFO!" I'm going to encourage you to keep your end of that ultimatum.Being _that_ unreasonable is the thing that's very very close to "a fireable offence" in my opinion.
Quite where that line is drawn between "zero" and "72 hours" is certainly arguable, but I'd suggest its somewhat closer to zero than 72. Like I said, personally I've done it for 16 hours or 24 hours, and been happy enough with both. YMMV. I guess it also depends on your experience with how often your on call alerts go off, and how much time is typically spent actually doing anything while on call. For me, the worst I've ever had is for me to get paged once or twice on maybe 30% of my on call weekends, and typically spend less than 10 or 20 mins on the vast majority of those pages, with only very rare times when actual serious time is required, like maybe once or twice a year tops.
It's not clear to me why you think "I refuse to do the thing you're asking me to do" is _less_ reasonable than saying "I will only do the thing you're asking me if you pay me $large_amount"
To me, the latter response is perfectly reasonable. There are plenty of tasks that I wouldn't want to do as part of my regular work duties, that I would be happy to do in exchange for the right bonus check.
If a manager is looking for someone to perform the task, and they decided to _fire_ an employee because they said "I'd do it for $X" instead of saying "No I won't do it", I'd say that manager was either on a delusional ego trip or looking for another chump to exploit.
Being paid at 2/3 base is technically not "unpaid" and it's better than most other tech companies, but it's hardly laudable. They're basically saying your life (literally--the time you spend on-call is time you never get back) is worth less when you're working for them, but outside office hours.
I will probably never cease to be amazed at how naive software engineers can be. It's like the relatively high base salaries act as bedazzling enchantments that turn off parts of the rational brain.
No, they're saying the inconvenience of having to be (approximately) butt-in-desk doing your job is greater than the inconvenience of having to be near your home.
It depends how much you value your time outside of your 40. I value it at time and a half. If you want me to work those hours at time and a half or you want me to sit by a phone both is fine but that's how much it costs.
More than happy for the market to eat my lunch. I'll eat mine, uninterrupted.
